Another Climate Lawsuit Brewing?

Mark Jacobson, the Stanford professor who claims the U.S. can run solely on renewables, tells his critics he’s hired an attorney.

Mark Jacobson, the Stanford engineering professor who became the darling of the green Left by repeatedly claiming the U.S. economy can run solely on renewable energy, has threatened to take legal action against the authors of an article that demolished his claims last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The paper — whose lead author is Chris Clack, a mathematician who has worked at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Colorado and now has an energy consulting firm — received coverage in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other outlets, including a piece from yours truly in this space. Clack’s paper went through rigorous vetting and numerous delays that lasted more than a year. Rather than accept any of the criticisms Clack and his nearly two dozen co-authors made, Jacobson responded with tirades on Twitter, EcoWatch, and elsewhere. He claimed that his work doesn’t contain a single error, that all of his critics are whores for hydrocarbons, and that, well, dammit, he’s right. Never mind that Jacobson overstated the amount of available hydropower in the U.S. by roughly a factor of ten and claimed that in just three decades or so, we won’t need any gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel because we will all be flying to Vegas in hydrogen-powered 737s.

But Jacobson has also made it clear that he’s considering litigation. After hearing rumors about his legal threats, I obtained redacted copies of two e-mails Jacobson sent to Clack and his co-authors last month. In one e-mail, sent June 27 at 6:11 p.m., Jacobson warned, “just to keep you informed, I have hired an attorney to address the falsification of claims about our work in the Clack article.” About an hour later, Jacobson sent another e-mail to them. It concluded with Jacobson saying, “Yes, and I have hired an attorney.”

No legal complaints have been filed yet. But by intimating legal action, Jacobson joins company with another thin-skinned climate catastrophist and hero of the green Left: Michael Mann. As readers may know, Mann, a professor at Penn State University — who, by the way, has a star turn in Leonardo DiCaprio’s new climate-disaster pic, Before the Flood — sued National Review, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Rand Simberg, and Mark Steyn for defamation in 2012. The suit demanded a jury trial, and the litigation is still pending. (For Steyn’s paint-blistering take on Mann and climate McCarthyism, read his 2015 Senate testimony.)

Mann’s litigation and Jacobson’s implied threat to sue show how influential, well-funded climate scientist-activists are resorting to bully tactics to try to intimidate their intellectual antagonists. Rather than engage in civil, fact-based debate about climate change and climate policy, Mann and his fellow travelers have engaged in public smear campaigns against other scientists. [….-

Of course, Jacobson’s veiled threat to sue his critics may be just that. But for Clack, even the threat of litigation shows how public discourse has deteriorated. “I don’t see how he thinks any of this is helpful,” Clack told me. “It diminishes all of science the way he has behaved. It’s beyond the pale in my opinion.”

After talking to Clack, I e-mailed Jacobson asking if he is, in fact, planning litigation. He replied: “I have no comment except to say that any email you have obtained from a third party that has my words on it is copyrighted, and your printing any email of mine would be done without my permission and would be considered a copyright infringement.”

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210 thoughts on “Another Climate Lawsuit Brewing?”

The reason he acts this way is because he can’t defend his position any other way. Someone who was sure of his facts, would welcome the challenge of critics, and would have no need to run to the courts.

Judges are among the least qualified to determine what is and what is not climate science. As a case in point, consider the SCOTUS ruling related to the endangerment finding which by all rights should be vacated on the grounds that no court has the jurisdiction to overrule the laws of physics.

Dear Charles the moderator. Portugal ran the whole country on renewables for 4 days, yes the entire country including all manufacturing. This included solar, wind and hydro, so if they can do it for that period of time it would be simple to scale it up. I would like to see the evidence against that being possible. Surely that would be technology denying. Iowa is scaling up their use of wind and at the moment. They are up to 40% of the entire state being powered by wind. It used to be 0, now its 40%, get where that is going? Include batteries to store excess power and as they say in England, Bob’s your uncle!

Iowa? Try South Australia, the more the wind blows the higher the price, $130 Mwh and if it doesn’t blow the spot price can get to $14,000 Mwh. Coal, before the Greens started stuffing about with the system ran to $40-50 Mwh.
Renewables, clean, green and free.

Dear F. Ross, they didn’t have problems with renewables, the storm bought the power transmission towers down, you can google the pictures of them destroyed on the ground, by the way the first power to come back on line was from a wind farm, ooops!

Dear Old44, the reason, and this based on a recently completed study, why SA has the most expensive electricity is not because of renewables. The enquiry stated that the price of gas was causing a spike in the price of electricity. The other reason is that virtually all states gold plated their transmission to a ridiculous standard way beyond what was require to secure the network. All Australians are now paying for this, in fact this cost makes up around 50% of the total of all power bills. So not greenies more government stupidity. You can google the report which also stated that continuing to up the usage of renewables will bring the price down in the future.

Portugal’s wind power (20%) Solar (2%) means they ran on hydro for 4 days, just like California did for a short time this spring when they were emptying reservoirs to make room for run off. Many places can’t install this much hydro. Coupled with a massive debt incurred to install all that renewable, Portugal is not a great example.
I’m sure, given enough resources, we could run this country on renewables, but the economic and environmental costs would be staggering. And for what end?

As I write, S.A. Wind is generating 77 Mw of a total capacity of 1,437 Mw, less than 5.4% efficiency Yesterday it was around the 900-950 mark. Great way to run a system but never mind, weatherall is installing a 129Mw battery system (useable 100 Mw) that will keep the state in power for a minimum of power for 4 minutes.

Wow! So for 96 hours in Portugal, ‘the entire country’, no one put any gas in their cars or trucks? Just motored along on subeams, breezes and a bit of hydro?
Pretty cool, heh? A vision of things to come?
Just Google the word ‘gullible’ before you post here again.

If you actually bothered to find out how this happened then perhaps Portugal’s electricity demand would be a good place to start. When you have checked and confirmed that the 4 days in question were at the time of year when peak demand is at it’s lowest (roughly half of average annual demand, and less than Greater London’s) and then check the history of power generation you will find that Portugal is particularly historically blessed with hydro power (and those dams that all true environmentalists detest). The EU has provided massive subsidies for wind and solar, but even then during the 4 days in question the contribution from those sources were meagre. You will notice also that this miraculous coincidence of weather and low demand has not occurred since, despite growing investment in wind an solar. So what’s your point? One swallow does not a summer make, as they say in England.

Hey Steve, how do you scale up intermittent sources to make them immune to intermittency?
If they relied on wind and solar for 100% of their power, and this worked for a couple of days in a row, is that proof it just takes determination?
Or is it more like there was a period of time when the wind blew all night?
As for batteries…we went all through that a few days ago…the largest battery banks in the world provide a few minutes power at most for large regions like California.
There is simply no way to store electrons in anything like the quantities consumed every second of every day in places like the US.
No way.
No how.
Not now.
Not soon.
Maybe not ever…unless we all stop needing power in parge amounts.

reply to all, just build more turbines and solar arrays, just like one power station won’t power the needs of the USA. So if one won’t do …. build another, then another, then hook them up to a grid. Oh …. wait we could do that with solar and wind until we have enough … simple! just a matter of commitment!

Hi Y’all me again. I found this. It would only take .6 percent of the surface area of the continental United States to power the entire country with renewable solar power. Just 11,200,000 acres to generate 4,000,000 GWh of clean energy. Yes it is of course not that simple, and I am sure all the clever people on this site would be able to solve the problem, but hey, a bit of commitment and its done. Back up with wind, a few batteries and hydro, problem solved!

No they didn’t. Did they shut off their vehicles for 4 days? And what happens when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, which by the way is a daily occurrence? Hydroelectric plants alone can’t handle the demand so they buy electricity from reliable sources powered by fossil fuels or nuclear fission.

It can be done but only if a very large proportion of the renewables is hydro. Hydro normally has very high despatchability and can be rapidly adjusted up and down at low cost to match the “junk renewables” wind and solar. A long dry spell can mean big trouble though.

By the way one of the main problems with Jacobsens “modelling” is that he assumes roughly a ten-fold increase in maximum hydro production and also that hydro production can also be stopped entirely for long periods (presumably leaving rivers downstream dry).

so if they can do it for that period of time it would be simple to scale it up. I would like to see the evidence against that being possible.

It is very simple to scale up and run the world on renewables if you have control of the weather and can decide at any time how strong is the wind blowing on wind farms, how much sun solar panels receive day and night, and when and how much it rains upstream of your hydro reservoirs.

Otherwise you depend on the vagaries of the weather and it is impossible to run a country on renewables only. Even building a huge overcapacity and using curtailment, something that would make energy prohibitively expensive, wouldn’t solve the problem. On a cold winter period, with no wind, during a drought, it would not matter how much renewable capacity you have for any non-tropical country. It would require such massive storage capacity that we cannot imagine building it, much less paying for it.

Is this evidence enough for you? In the foreseeable future we are always going to need non-renewable energy if we want reliable energy.

Steve, why did they only run “the whole country on renewables” for 4 days? I mean if the renewables are there why not use them for 365 days a year? I mean it isn’t like your claim is hiding any important caveats, right? So WHY wouldn’t they continue to use renewables for their whole country EVERY day?

Just an FYI, you might want to look into how big a battery you need to store that excess power for when it is needed and the environmental damage done to produce those batteries.

You miss the important point – whether one CAN provide all of the energy by renewables is not the issue, but whether it makes sense to do so. Four whole days ??!! I might add that a 4 day period is not any kind of realistic test – the wind has to blow for more than 4 days and the sun shine brightly for longer than 4 days and hydro is not an unending source of power either- you need rain. In fact, none of the energy sources you mention can guarantee sufficient power for even one minute.
And how does one “scale up” wind power, solar power or hydropower, none of which are under the control of humans? And how do batteries solve anything? Batteries STORE energy, they do not CREATE energy. And when those batteries are depleted after a lull in the wind or sun or rain, how are they to be recharged? Any “solutions” require enormous duplication of renewable capacity, costing a small fortune, and, of course, like all renewable schemes, guarantee absolutely nothing, not even the lowest emission rates – nuclear does that and the revolutionary molten salt reactors will
emit even less and dominate all power generation – cheaper and safer than any other technology. Wind and solar power belong in the 19th century. They are primitive technologies that died out for very good reasons.

But, F Ross, SA’s problem was a storm that levelled 23 pylons and cut its network…

If they had correctly set the ‘trip’ on their windfarms (something the Germans have been doing since 2008), they would not have gone offline. If they’d have had the now proposed grid scal battery, they’d ahve had enough time to get the power flowing over the interconnector.

SA does not have a renewables problem… it does seem to have an incompetence problem

Steve – A grid can run entirely on hydro. No so for wind and solar. You can not just “scale” up the amount of hydro. Hydro is a limited resource. Also this was done off-peak versus on-peak.

Two minor points. I believe the original claim was 95% and it included biomass as well. Biomass, like hydro is near exclusively driven by the essential synchronous rotating technology that makes the grid possible.

Your dishonesty, and the dishonesty of climate alarmists in general is why I started questioning them. The contribution from renewables was meager as pointed out by several people below. You can’t ‘scale up’ hydro, unless you have unexploited sources, and many do not consider it a renewable anyway.

Sorry to inform you but, Iowa, where I live, is NOT at 40% renewables. A questionable study was published that stated that Iowa COULD be at that level in 5 years and that was all. And given the growing public resentment of living around these eye sore, noisy monstrosities I wonder if the space to build them will be available.
People who support these things do not seem to understand that for every meg of wind on line there needs to be a meg of coal, hydro, oil, gas or nuke power standing by. Why? Well, you look up what percentage of time the wind is blowing enough in Iowa to have the turbines turning. This FACT effectively doubles the cost of capital spent to support power to the grid. And the biggest owner of them in Iowa, Buffet, has publicly stated that if not for the tax breaks, it makes no sense to build them. As they can not stand on their own.
Now, batteries have a chance of making a difference but that remains to be seen.
The other thing about the supporters is that most of them are NIMBY’s.
Are you?

‘Running things on renewables’ is not a goal in itself, it has a purpose, that being to reduce the emission of CO2 to zero. ‘Renewables’ do not reduce CO2 emissions to zero. Please quantify all other claims.

The Portuguese grid is incapable of manufacturing replacement hardware for that same grid. In other words, we have a coal-powered and nuclear-powered and oil-powered society making hardware that emits first and generates later.

Iowa’s scaling of ‘wind’ will not power the manufacture of ‘state-sized’ batteries and replacement wind turbines and reduce CO2 emissions to zero. Or at all it seems.

In short, there is no point, if it doesn’t accomplish the primary goal claimed for it. Further, wind turbines are destructive of everything: land, animals, energy, materials, capital, workers and the view. Read the fine print: “Requires batteries”.

Thank God the turbine blade industry in Ontario has collapsed this week. Hundreds of subsidised green jobs lost. There is now at least a ten year moratorium on putting up any more due to the financial disaster created already. In a free market there would be no such wind turbines in Ontario or Iowa. Not one, because they can’t compete with hydro or nuclear on any score card.

Assuming you are even correct, you conclusion is as bogus as ever.
Just because for a short period of time, while all the stars were aligned in your favor, a very small country was able to run for a couple of days on renewables, is not evidence that renewables are capable of taking over completely.

Steve, how do you intend to power CA from wind and solar in FL?
Transmission losses are huge, the practical limit for power transmission is around 500 miles. So your plan to just add more towers and panels can’t work.

Steve, Steve, Steve. First off you 0.6 is low by at least an order of magnitude.
Secondly it assumes that the sun will conveniently stay directly over head 24/7 and that there will never be any clouds, and that you panels will continue to produce at rated capacity forever.
Beyond that, you are still putting all of your panels in the desert southwest.
If you try to transmit that power up to New England, you will lose over 80% of it on the way.

Griffie, other countries have suffered the loss of pylons without the whole grid going down.
The fact remains that renewables make the grid fragile, then any additional problems cause the whole thing to collapse.

“Iowa is scaling up their use of wind and at the moment. They are up to 40% of the entire state being powered by wind. It used to be 0, now its 40%, get where that is going?”

Well, if Iowa has an experience anything like Oklahoma, then Iowa will be going bankrupt in the future trying to pay for windmill farm subsidies.

Oklahoma is currently paying over $100 million per year in subsidies to windmill farms which was projected to increase into the billions of dollars annually, except Oklahoma just passed a law stopping all that nonsense.

Dear Steve,
I once went a whole day without eating.
If I just scale that up I’ll never need another calorie of energy as long as I live…about two weeks, which is about how long any country will last pursuing your scaling proposal.

While Portugal did run on renewables, it includes hydroelectric power among renewables and the article had an addendum that fossil fuels may have been used for pumped storage.

Hydroelectric power is important as it is what controls the the frequency and supports the voltage of the 100% renewable grid. As South Australia discovered, without voltage support, Wind and Solar cannot supply power to the grid (without the addition of either large DC to AC motor-generator sets, or an efficient sine-wave generator rated in megawatts). Without enough on-demand capacity of spinning machines, grid voltage support is impossible.

This is why Jacobson’s mis-estimate of potential hydroelectric power being ten times too high is damning, as Jacobson’s ‘estimate’ is the amount of capacity needed for voltage support. If wind and solar were experiencing conditions that allowed them to produce power to drive the whole USA and export power elsewhere, but capacity for voltage support was not there, the US would still experience a nation-wide blackout.

However, the real problem is the difference between feasible and possible. Lord Kelvin declared that no conceivable combination of materials and sources of power could feasibly result in powered, man-carrying heavier-than-air flight. Lord Kelvin said this when the materials were wood, steel, leather, and cloth and the power source was a low pressure steam engine. If Lord Kelvin was present at the Wright brothers’ first flight at Kittyhawk* and asked about his pronouncement, he would point to the launching catapult and the distance flown and say that it still was not feasible and that he never said it was not possible. Yes, the US could be powered by 100% renewable power, it is possible, but it is not feasible for the US to be powered by 100% renewable power as it too expensive to try.

* The Wright brothers proved that powered flight was possible in 1903, by flying any distance, no matter how short. Bleriot proved that powered flight was feasible in 1910 by flying across the English Channel.

Yeah I noticed the neomarxbrothers are now adding in the formerly loathed and much maligned hydro as a ‘renewable’ , (in third place of course) . This is precisely because windmills and solar are proving to be unreliable and expensive. (South Australia comes to mind.)

There are lots of jurisdictions where hydro has been powering industry and homes 100%, for a few generations! Quebec, Manitoba, British Columbia, Norway, Switzerland, New Zealand… Indeed half the eastern seaboard of the US is powered by Quebec Hydro including NYC. Out of your depth here Steve.

They were running their hydro at max capacity to keep from going into spill when they got a bunch of rain. You cant do that 365. You obviously have no clue how hydro or he power industry works. Much like this engineer.

Maybe someone might explain to Steve why it is important to have spinning plants that can control both frequency and voltage on a transmission grid. I’ve never sat down and calculated how many wind turbines and solar panels could be destroyed with out of control generation, let alone connected devices powered by the grid. It might be fun to watch!

There is a new method of making hydrogen that is inexpensive. It could be powered using current renewable forms of energy. It uses about 90% less electrical energy to make the same amount of hydrogen than current methods.

The hydrogen could be used to make methane. The methane cost estimate is currently US$2.90/GJ.

It could, if the “current renewable” is hydro. You just try to calculate the cost for a hydrogen plant that will be cycling constantly between 0 and 100 % capacity, and running at maybe 20-30% average which is the realistic case for wind/siolar.

Why nothing but hand waving about this new inexpensive method of making hydrogen? How about a link to this amazing breakthrough? I mean you wouldn’t want people to think you were hiding anything. They might wonder if there is something about this amazing new development that you don’t want us to know because it would actually show that your claim is pure fantasy.

I’m all in favor of using a highly explosive gas to power the country. More exciting explosions on the news and a guaranteed population reducer.

Science and science fiction are now apparently the same thing. Predictions are not predictions, but rather based on actual knowledge of what WILL occur in the future. Time travel is probably just around the corner.

Geoff my recent namesake,
But people want to reduce CO2.
So why make hydrogen using a great deal of energy and producing CO2, if you go on to make methane which makes more CO2 when burned for energy?
You seem perilously close to a perpetual motion concept, but if not, close to negative returns on investment.
Geoff (the original Geoff).

You can use the electricity from a natural gas power plant to make the hydrogen and then convert that to methane. Then you have a never ending source of power. Completely renewable too since hydrogen is involved ….. somehow ……. Natural gas is a fracking evil fossil fuel, but methane made from renewable hydrogen is enviro-friendly. :)

Geoff,
It seems like you got it backwards in the real world, virtually all the Hydrogen in the world is made from METHANE. Why would anyone in their right mind want to use any energy to make Hydrogen to then convert it to methane which happens to be in abundance at this time?
I have worked on about a dozen hydrogen plants, they all used natural gas and steam as the feed which is run through a furnace inside expensive tubes made of high alloy metallurgy, filled with catalyst, suitable for about 1500-1800 F with expensive catalyst in the tubes. Hydrogen can also be made with other hydrocarbon feeds, but I have never seen one. Normally the hydrogen is used at the plant sites to upgrade transportation fuels or or companies build Hydrogen plants in adjoining properties and sell it to others. Of course we cannot forget the fertilizer manufacture, which also normally uses Natural Gas in significant quantities to manufacture hydrogen to manufacture their product.

I don’t know how many times I have heard about an inexpensive way to make hydrogen from water or something else, unfortunately the rules of chemistry require a minimum amount of energy to separate the oxygen from the Hydrogen molecules, which even could not be violated although Obama’s folks thought they could change the laws of chemistry and physics as a key part of their energy plan. Also Hydrogen is very difficult to handle as the small molecules can go through the small spaces in metals at certain temperatures.

Why would you take hydrogen and convert it to methane only to then oxidize it? The direct conversion of hydrogen with oxygen to water is far better.
The only advantage is in storage and transportation. CH4 is more dense than H2 and easier to compress at moderate temperatures.

The combustion is another matter all together. In rockets we use a metric called Isp (Impulse specific) which is essentially a ratio of how much thrust is produced for each pound of fuel (propellants) consumed. it is an efficiency metric. LOX/CH4 (CH4 is methane) engines operate around an Isp of 360 -390, LOX/LH2 (LH2 is liquid H2) engines operate at an Isp of around 420. BTW these engines are often run “rich” (excess O2) because O2 is far denser than H2 and we are ejecting mass out the rear to create impulse thrust after all, so the extra ejection mass helps.

The problem arises in storage and transportation of the H2 even LH2 is pretty low density (balsa wood sinks in LH2). This means that the propellant tank for the LH2 is really big. About 3/4 of the space shuttle big orange tank was LH2 storage. The other issue is gaseous H2 is even less dense and because the molecule is the small (smallest possible) it has a tendency to diffuse through even solid metal. This might mean that tanks for transport vehicles might become the limiting design driver.

Don’t worry that a ruptured H2 tank will explode in a fire ball. It doesn’t work that way. The combustion front expands subsonically. That means it “deflagrates” not “detonates”. Ands furthermore any fire that did arise from a rupture would necessarily exist about 8 to 10 feet away from the tank because the hydrogen needs to properly mix with the surrounding air before it burns. Because the tank is under pressure the vent plume will push any sufficiently atomized fuel well away from the tank itself. And when the pressure has died down, it is because the fuel is gone.

The Challenger explosion happened because of massive rupture in the LH2 tank near where pressurized LOX was also venting due to the rupture. The Hindenburg was certainly no explosion, a big fire ball yes, and hot, but no blast waves. There were many survivors.

I think the Montreal Canadiens of the late 70’s were the best hockey team ever! My friend says they weren’t. I’ve hired an attorney! I told him about that time I didn’t get any fries with my happy meal, too! And I might say something about my mom sending me to bed early for telling lies!!

Yes, it is a sad state of affairs when an academic resorts to an action intended to stifle peer criticism. It is the basis of the Scientific Method and the justification for having all the high-priced journals make a profit. He sounds like the product of an educational system that never really grades anyone’s work beyond giving them an “A” for effort. It is too bad that his feelings are hurt.

I have no comment except to say that any email you have obtained from a third party that has my words on it is copyrighted, and your printing any email of mine would be done without my permission and would be considered a copyright infringement.

IANAL. Having said that, he’s full of it. There are exemptions for copyright.

Fair use is a legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances. Section 107 of the Copyright Act provides the statutory framework for determining whether something is a fair use and identifies certain types of uses—such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research—as examples of activities that may qualify as fair use. link

Imagine if a politician could sue reporters into silence by using copyright. That would cut one of the major legs out from under our democracy.

Anyway, the purpose of copyright is to protect commercial value, not to silence critics.

Notwithstanding the above, we’ve all seen courts do some pretty crazy things.

More to the point, copyright is for protection of financial interests in creative works of authorship or art. From the Copyright Office website:
What Is Copyright?
Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U. S. Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. Section 106 of the 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to do and to authorize others to do the following:
• reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords
• prepare derivative works based upon the work
• distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending
• perform the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works
• display the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audio visual work
• perform the work publicly (in the case of sound recordings*) by means of a digital audio transmission

… It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the copyright law to the owner of copyright. These rights, however, are not unlimited in scope. Sections 107 through 122 of the 1976 Copyright Act establish limitations on these rights. In some cases, these limitations are specified exemptions from copyright liability. One major limitation is the doctrine of “fair use,” which is given a statutory basis in section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act.

Jacobson would seem to have an elevated view of his importance if he maintains that everything he writes is a creative expression in the literary realm, which people would pay to read or hear. Another example of someone who is out of touch with reality.

How would you know they are ‘dumb e-books’ unless you’ve purchased and read them? Are your e-book reviews forthcoming or are you too afraid of losing a lawsuit even though Rud Istvan says that can’t happen?

Hah! That is a good one, dude.
You so funny!
Sure, everyone knows that the process of peer review is and always has been the definition of what science is…
Not!
In fact, the process of pal review has not got one single thing to do with the scientific method.
Were you joking, or are you seriously this ignorant?

There seems to be a new usage of the word “science”, in which it has a meaning analogous to words like halal or kosher.
In this usage, it seems that an attempt is made to equate the word “science” with the word “factual”.

“The only thing that Rud Istvan does here and elsewhere is plug his dumb e-books. Go buy them and make him rich.”
David that is your opinion, which is allowed in the USA.
I disagree, as I always find Rud’s contribution to a discussion very informative,worthwhile to read,
and mull over.
Sorry you are apparently unable to benefit from his comments.

Mr. Dirkse: Thank you, only took you four posts in 16 min. to prove the old adage about opening your mouth to prove you are a fool, instead of shutting up and leaving us to suppose you a fool. How do scientists find the time for peer review, aren’t they busy keeping people out of science? Your science allows you to review books without reading them? Does Mr. Soros assign these names, or do you get to choose one? “Cause others choose cooler, mafia-sounding names like “Luis Anastasia” or “Michael darby” (Irish mafia).

David Dirkse July 19, 2017 at 8:56 pm
e-books are not peer reviewed, so they are not science.

I checked a number of places that define the scientific method (example https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/scientific%20method ) and not a one of them mention “peer review”.
But you seem to follow the “climate-science method” so it’s no surprise that you are unfamiliar with the real one.

David, sadly in science – not just climate science – peer review often consists of the reviewer peering at the title page, noting the author(s) he or she does not approve of and saying “not worth publishing.” Your faith in it however, is touching. How were you able to preserve such naivety?

I think that you misunderstand what passes for “peer review” today. You have to understand that scientific literature publishing is a lucrative business. It is important that the journals maintain their reputations for reliable, and relatively uncontroversial articles so that they can continue to sell their exorbitantly priced subscriptions. It is important to keep the ‘wingnuts,’ who can be aggressive, at bay. Thus, the journals employ ‘gatekeepers’ who are not paid (to bolster journal profits) and are usually anonymous (to avoid consequences for the ‘reviewers). Not surprisingly, you will rarely, if ever, see something as radical as ‘Relativity’ in today’s mainstream journals. Also, despite good intentions, there are an unconscionable number of papers that the actual reviewers (subscribers) can’t replicate, or discover outright errors and even fraud in. The important peer review happens after the ‘peer-reviewed’ papers are published and the subscribers read the papers. The gate keeper system (“Peer Reviewed Literature”) probably, at best, insures mediocracy and continued profits for the publishers.

Not all scientific literature that has received an initial blessing by a presumed peer is published in hard copy; some of it goes to the web to save money (color pictures can cost the author a lot of money), and to save turn-around review time. On the other hand, even things that don’t get blessed by one or more gatekeepers will get ruthless peer review on blogs such as WUWT. [Actually, Anthony and perhaps others here do serve as gatekeepers, just like journals.]

The real ‘peer review’ occurs when specialists in the field read a published paper, not BEFORE it gets published. You seem to be someone who is more comfortable attacking people than attacking their ideas or facts. Ad hominem attacks are a last resort for those who don’t have anything to contribute.

Jacobson’s assertion is ludicrous.
If anything anyone wrote in an email was a copyrighted work and any unauthorized sharing, forwarding, or duplication of it was a violation, the world would be a very different place.
For one thing, the act of writing a mail or a letter to someone puts it in a different category altogether.
It would be like claiming that a voicemail you left for someone was a copyright work of oration and, if the person who you left it to told the world, that you could then sure them.

He is obviously either a borderline mental defective, or is just a shameless lair.

What a p.r.i.c.k. His fellow Stanford physicists hired by Google for the RE<C project in 2007 to conquer renewables declared when they quit four years later:

At the start of RE<C, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope …

40% of Iowa’s yearly power needs come from wind, they are installing more turbines to increase that percentage. Texas is also ramping up it’s reliance on wind. I would count that as general purpose, wouldn’t you?

I do not know about 40%.
It seems they did make over one third of their power from wind in 2016.
Iowa has one percent of the population of the US, but is the fifth leading user of power. They generate more wind power than any state except Texas.
They are also the leading maker of ethanol.
It sounds like they are the subsidy kings of the world.
I would like to see some numbers on how much they pay, how much WE pay for them to have all that wind generation, etc…but I am too tired.
Steve has a point for once in his life, but like any warmista he exaggerated his claim and thus is technically wrong…it is not 40%.

“Iowa obtained more than one-third of its net electricity generation from wind in 2016, the highest share of any state. Iowa is second only to Texas in the total amount of electricity generated from wind.56 The strongest winds occur in northwestern Iowa, and, although there are wind facilities across the state, most of the wind power plants in Iowa are located in the state’s north and west.57,58 Iowa’s wind resources place it among the nation’s leading states in the percentage of in-state electricity generation from renewable resources other than hydroelectric power. About 2% of the state’s net electricity generation comes from hydroelectric power and biomass.59 The Iowa Energy Center has created the Biomass Energy Conversion Facility to focus on development of Iowa’s abundant biomass resource potential.60 Iowa’s number of sunny days and its resulting solar power potential increase from northeast to southwest across the state.61 Only a small amount of solar photovoltaic electricity is generated in Iowa, all from distributed (customer-sited, small-scale) facilities.62,63

Iowa produces more ethanol than any other state in the nation.

Iowa is the leading ethanol-producing state in the nation and has one-fourth of the nation’s ethanol production capacity.64,65 The state’s ethanol plants have a combined productive capacity of about 4 billion gallons per year. Iowa’s plentiful cornfields provide the feedstock for most of the state’s 44 ethanol plants, which include three cellulosic ethanol plants that use agricultural waste, either corn stover (the stalk, leaf, cob, and husk left after harvest) or corn kernel fiber, as feedstocks.66,67 A plant that will use municipal solid waste as a feedstock is in development.68 Iowa also has a dozen biodiesel plants with a combined productive capacity of more than 330 million gallons per year.69 Iowa has the second-largest biodiesel production capacity in the nation, after Texas.70 In 2016, the state produced a record 297 million gallons of biodiesel.71”

Note that electric power is far from being all of the energy needed by anyone is any state.
I misspoke in my post just above…Iowa is about 24th in per capita power consumption…but the state is fifth in per capita energy use.
My guess is that in a place with long cold Winters, they are not using eclectic heat much, like we do here in Florida where it is about 1% of our power usage.

Weasel words. How much of actual consumption in real time was wind generated? And how much was thermal power imported from elsewhere? And how much unusable wind power was dumped on neighbouring states?

Wind power works fairly well as lomg as you have neighbors that don’t use it.

you are not too bright steve . energy generation does not mean energy generated when it is needed . there is a big difference in the wind and solar world between nameplate capacity, electricity generated and the actual critical term of electricity available to the grid when it is actually needed.

every single proponent of wind i have spoken to ,including some of the so called industry experts go to great lengths to avoid discussing this.

Since you didn’t read, or didn’t understand, the link I provided here’s a simplified version:

The only way Iowa can get away with generating so much wind power is because it is attached to a larger grid. If it wasn’t attached to that grid its system would come crashing down just like is happening in Australia.

Electricity is fungible. It comes from a variety of sources on the grid all at once. Because Iowa is attached to a larger grid the wind power is just a small part of a larger whole. The electricity Iowa consumes, as distinct from the power it produces, is much closer to 6% than to 40% from wind. In terms of keeping the grid stable that’s quite manageable.

If every state tried to match Iowa, it would be a disaster. The grid would be unmanageable. This link describes some of the issues. The big deal is dispatchable power.

Why do we care so much about reliable electricity. Pakistan is a good example of what happens without reliable electricity.

““I have no comment except to say that any email you have obtained from a third party that has my words on it is copyrighted, and your printing any email of mine would be done without my permission and would be considered a copyright infringement.”” Hahaha, no. –Attorney Andrew Branca

Is he really one of those? He’s an engineering prof at Stanford. Here is a 2015 report of a discussion with Hansen, Wigley, Kerry Emanual and Ken Caldeira, pouring cold water on his ideas. And here is a 2013 paper which wasn’t impressed.

Don’t know how many Stanford professors can hire lawyers for such things, but I’m sure Jacobson won’t have trouble fining one, no matter his means. That is true however for both sides when they land in the middle of a political battle.

An article criticizing the work of a person, that is focused strictly on the correctness of the work, and that does not criticize the character of a person cannot be defamatory.

The gravamen of the tort of libel is injury to the reputation of a person. To call a man a liar, or a thief, is a libelous injury his reputation, although truth is a defense.

To state that claims in a scientific paper have not been proved by sufficient evidence is not an injury to the authors reputation.

The difference is that in the case of a statement that injures a plaintiff’s reputation, the defendant will have the burden at trial of proving the truth of the statement. Where there is no allegation of injury to reputation, the plaintiff has not made a prima facie case, and the judge will not submitt the matter to a jury.

I was looking out the window of the post office today at Wallula, Washington. I quipped that you will not see any wind turbines from Stanford.

The sad truth is you can not build wind farms where people like Mark Jacobson can see them.

I am blogging from my boat at Wallula gap. The reason mu boat is here is because of the good wind for sailing. Many years ago I would drive by Stanford to get to this same boat when I worked in San Jose. San Francisco Bay also has a great wind resource.

When I moved to Washington State to work at WNP-2, part of the deal was to move my boat. There were no wind farms here back then.

Local jobs can be created by digging holes one day and filling them in the next, over and over and over. The rediculous idea that all jobs are “good” is a progressive delusion.

As for wind, the people who push wind are among the most vile on the planet. It’s a lie that destroys the environment for the sole purpose of making the rich richer. Generations will pay for the stupidity of this scam.

It’s fascinating that the writers of this blog can use degrading, angry language when writing about topics, but commenters are limited to “love the post”, “people are wonderful” and so forth. The use of an accurate term is strictly forbidden. Why? Honesty is the worst policy?

Considering that their “benefits” have consisted of a less stable grid and higher energy prices your assertion is dubious at best. I think Sheri’s point was that “local” is another one of those illiterate and innumerate progressive shibboleths. The economic value of the job (rather what compensates it for the expense of the work) is what matters, not the location.

griff,the citizens of scotland did no such thing. subsidies for wind installations from general taxation paid a large part of the costs,and subsequent feed in tariffs paid for by the same taxpayers keep the money rolling in. i was talking to a local landowner about this only on monday.

the same situation is happening as we speak with wealthy estate owners up and down the uk installing biomass as fast as they can.

Griff: Only if the local citizens are billionaires from out of state, out of the country and/or employed by the government. Wind is rarely put in at the request of the citizens—it’s the RICH AND GREEDY AND POWERFUL, often OIL COMPANIES, who put in the turbines. Citizens are just shafted and ignored. It’s like the cattlemen and railroad men of the old west—destroy anyone who gets in your way with impunity. It’s the ultimate 1% on government teet steroids. There is immense distain for human beings in by the wind industry. They care ONLY for PROFIT. Humans are just an annoyance.

Benefitting by stealing other’s money is called “THEFT”. Look it up. A subsidy for an individual company or industry is THEFT. Redistribution of income is THEFT. I do not advocate theft as a way of life, though others have little or no problem as long as they are the recipients of the stolen goods or exempted from the theft itself, not the ones being stolen from. A truly caring, altruistice philosophy, I might add.

Where or what is this noble cause which has been corrupted? The pretense of fighting for that which is noble is itself lacking in nobility. Jacobson’s pretense is the very example of corruption of morality. Imagining nobility only makes imaginary nobility. Milk mixed in poison is poison. Genius mixed with lies is really skillful lying.

And deluded crap spews from the delusional.
If he was an idiot and believed what he claims to, that would be an excuse.
being smart is not an excuse…it makes it far far worse.
He has every reason and ability to know better.
Thus…he is mentally ill, or simply making crap up. Also known as lying.

“Spending a bit of money on a good lawyer has saved me and mine from a lot of misery on more than one occasion. I would say that a lawyer’s best skill is keeping you out of court.”

So commie Bob, don’t you mean a lot of money? I have also notice bad lawyers charge the same as good ones. The reason you needed a lawyer in the first place is that another lawyer wants to take you to court so that they can charge an hourly rate.

Clearly lawyers provide valuable services. Our children just paid the fee for setting up a living trust. My wife and I may be the first in a long time to kick the bucket while still owning a bucket.

I think the rule of law is one the reasons the US is a great country. The law should not be used to bully.

Courts should deal with legal stuff, not with scientific stuff. A “scientific” attitude “You dare to say I am not right? See you in court” has so far been limited climate and environmental so-called sciences. Fortunately. Even Germany under NSDAP in 1930s did not sink so low.

The chap is from Stanford University so I guess that he is well versed with the 2013 study conducted by Stanford University.

This study calculated that global photovoltaic industry now requires more electricity to make silicon wafers and solar troughs than it actually produces in return. Since 2000 the industry consumed 75 per cent more energy than it put onto the grid and all during its manufacturing and installation process.

No doubt the position with wind is broadly similar, unless wind is piggy backed upon already existing fossil fuel or nuclear generation that is required required for base load and back up. Note how Germany has come up against the buffer and has since about 2005 been unable to significantly reduce its CO2 emissions, and these increased last year (and I think also in 2015).

It should be clear to anyone that renewables are a failure (and don’t forget that many greens do not classify hydro as a renewable).

Offshore wind auctions will continue to be held regularly… I don’t think its going to be the only one.

and there’s this:

“British solar developer confirms that its proposed 40 MW solar farm in Hampshire, southern England, will be commissioned by early 2018 and built without the need for any form of subsidy or support from government”

The ‘no subsidy’ deal was done with a guarantee to take 100% of the power at an elevated price. Other generators are not given such a guarantee. It was exactly this ‘deal’ that is bankrupting Ontario right now. They are paying a premium for the power, and dumping AT A FEE into the US grid.

Germany is doing exactly the same thing. They demand that the ‘no subsidy’ wind power be purchased at retail price and when there is an excess it is dumped into the Central European Grid. It is of course dumped below cost. Even below the cost from coal fired plants. That, dear Griff, is a subsidy.

The fact that the wind turbines, which are offshore so they cost a frigging fortune, are not visibly subsidised (we should first see the capital write off formula permitted before agreeing) does not mean there isn’t some jiggery-pokery in the background that guarantees profits where there should be none.

“… any email you have obtained from a third party that has my words on it is copyrighted, and your printing any email of mine would be done without my permission and would be considered a copyright infringement.”

The power of Climate Delusion™ is that it makes fools and liars out of otherwise intelligent people. But these foolish liars then double-down on Stupid by claiming that expensive, unreliable, grid-killing, land-hogging, and environmentally destructive “renewables” aka “green” energy will “solve” a non-existent problem. Incredible.

“……Never mind that Jacobson overstated the amount of available hydropower in the U.S. by roughly a factor of ten ………..”

If anybody thinks that a hydropower generating facility can be built today anywhere in the USA, they have their heads way up their anal orifices.
It is totally IMPOSSIBLE to get any hydro facility built in the USA today. The enviro wackos and their good pals in the (state and Federal) EPA will make sure it never happens.

The INTENTIONAL goal of all the enviro wackos is that the production of energy, aside from wind and solar and growing “crops” just to burn them for fuel (incredible, is it not !! ) comes to a halt and also that existing energy production facilities are either rendered unprofitable.

“The Queen has a hydro generator’. Sure. It cost a fortune. It is just not practical as a substitute for mains electricity – but probably OK on small scale for charging a battery, even though expensive.

An engineering proposal to produce enough power to run Central California on hydro only: Build a dam 250 feet tall across Golden Gate. Create a great lake in Central Valley. Expel the population. That would generate a lot of hydro power, while reducing the power consumption. A beneficial side effect: Stanford would be submerged.

But, seriously, this threatened lawsuit illustrates a need to reform a legal system, where Stella can sue McDonald’s because she bought a cup of hot coffee, and win a million. We should consider a change in a direction of “a losing plaintiff pays defendant’s legal expenses”. This should also resolve many problems in the healthcare.

I wonder if it could be so simple that Jacobson simply forgot to put an upper limit on the instantaneous production capacity for hydropower, so his beautiful model just ramped it up to whatever was needed to balance sun and wind.

Of course he would never admit such an egregious error. His response on this crucial point is very weak, suggesting that he really doesn’t have any good excuse.

“I have no comment except to say that any email you have obtained from a third party that has my words on it is copyrighted, and your printing any email of mine would be done without my permission and would be considered a copyright infringement.”

We not only have these idiots destroying our power infra structure leaving us with totally unaffordable electricity prices but they are also demolishing our food producing capacity, their latest hoax Vertical Farming. Besides to clueless investors a huge number of people are going to suffer for this. Just google Vertical farming is not going to save the planet and watch the video.